The Impact of Sovereign Grace Music

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Benjamin Kreps:

Welcome to the Mark Prater podcast where our aim is to connect our global family of churches with our Executive Director. Mark, last week you gave us a report about the Executive Committee retreat in Louisville and mentioned you had an opportunity to tour the new Sovereign Grace facilities and you seemed pretty excited about the new Sovereign Grace Music studio. Talk to us about that.

Mark Prater:

Yeah. As an Executive Committee, we met at our new building, new facility in Louisville. And as you tour that facility, we began to think that the man who built this building actually built it for us because it's suited for us in so many ways. One of those is the Sovereign Grace Music studio that we're planning to build out that's in a section of the building that is a climate controlled four-car garage that the previous company used. Because it's climate controlled it can easily be turned into a studio. In fact, Bob Kauflin, our Director of Sovereign Grace Music was meeting with a a technical architect last week from Nashville who was coming up to just begin to talk about the needs and lay-out from a drawing standpoint how to build out this studio.

And so just to be in that space and to see what it's going to be was very exciting. On top of that, Bob had actually looked for studio space in Louisville or a space that could be converted into a studio for probably at least a year. And he couldn't find anything that was suitable until he walked into this building. So it kind of goes back to God, who had these wonderful plans when this building was originally built in 2014, for us to purchase it in 2022. And it fit us so well in so many ways.

Benjamin Kreps:

It's excellent. Yes. It's encouraging to see the nomadic wanderings of Bob and Sovereign Grace Music finally arriving into their appointed home. So grateful to hear that you were sharing as well with me some encouraging statistics about the reach and influence of Sovereign Grace Music.

Mark Prater:

Yeah. I was sharing those statistics and want to share them now because we have to step back and see the big picture for why it's so important to invest money into building out this studio. It's important because of the influence and impact Sovereign Grace Music has not only in Sovereign Grace churches throughout the world, but churches outside of Sovereign Grace throughout the world. To give you a little bit of an idea with current stats: 55 Sovereign Grace Music songs are in the top 2000; 19 of those songs are in the top 1000 songs. So it's really incredible. There have been 5.6 million Sovereign Grace songs played on Apple music, try to get your head around that number. There's an average of 82 listeners on Apple music per day, listening to Sovereign Grace Music.

In June of this year, 2022, 3.2 million Sovereign Grace Music songs were streamed on Spotify. So that was a good month for Sovereign Grace Music in June. They have 128,000 followers on Spotify. And Bob told me last week, now 251,000 followers on the Sovereign Grace Music YouTube channel. So that just gives you a little bit of idea of the influence and impact that Sovereign Grace Music is having not just here in the states, but throughout the world. We have Sovereign Grace Music songs translated into 22 different languages that are available on the Sovereign Grace Music website. So that gives you a little bit of the reach and the influence and impact Sovereign Grace Music has. And in addition to that, building out this studio and investing money into this studio, Bob's gonna be able to do actually more, obviously producing music, but also music videos that can be posted on YouTube.

And that's really important because, for example, our reach into Latin America and Sovereign Grace Music's impact in Latin America is very high. The songs translated into Spanish have created some of the biggest followers of Sovereign Grace Music. So it's not only important to Sovereign Grace Music, It's important to our mission throughout the world, in this case, Latin America, as we seek to plant and establish Sovereign Grace churches.

In addition to that, he's producing all kinds of good resources. He released three albums this year: Unchanging God volumes one and two, both on the Psalms, and then a new Spanish album as well. And there was a booklet that I was given when I was in Louisville. It's actually a devotional or what someone might call a meditation.

It's called Unchanging God: Meditations on Psalms and Songs. This was written for those two volumes, those two albums of Unchanging God, volumes one and two. And it was written by Sovereign Grace pastors. The pastors that participated: Ricky Alcantar from El Paso, Mark Alderton from Aurora, Colorado, Ben Kreps, you're from Living Hope Church in Middletown, Pennsylvania. You wrote the devotional for Psalms 121, 23 and 46. Really good Psalms by the way. Also Bill Patton at Covenant Fellowship and then Riley Spring over in Sydney at Sovereign Grace Church Parmatta, and the editors were Jared Mellinger and Rob Flood. So this was a collaborative effort between Sovereign Grace Music and those pastors to write a devotional that I think is just really good. So if you go to the devotional, it lists the Psalm. I'm looking at Psalm 90 right now, then it lists the lyrics of the song that Psalm was written about.

And there’s a reflection on the truth contained in that Psalm, and then a prayer, and then some questions that you can use for yourself individually, or for those going through this devotional with others. So that was sold at WorshipGod. I was able to get one. So I'm gonna talk to Bob about making this available to anyone who would want to purchase it, maybe from the Sovereign Grace Music website. So all that to illustrate just the good work that Sovereign Grace Music is doing and why investing into a studio in this building is just so important. And I think so strategic for our future.

Benjamin Kreps:

Yes, yes. Wonderful. It's encouraging to see not just wonderful music being produced, which we've grown accustomed to, but also more and more publishing happening as well, which I think Jared is helping to lead that initiative; producing materials to edify, equip, train, encourage. Just so grateful to be a part of Sovereign Grace and what God is doing through us. So thank you, Mark, for the update. Thank you all for watching or reading. We'll see you here, Lord willing, next week. Bye for now.